Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Chats du jour: Papillon

Laverne wants to be free, free. She wants to be outside and will whine incessantly until I put her out, which is when she starts whining to come in because she hates being on that stupid leash. Because SH is afraid she will be eaten by the giant neighborhood pit bulls that I have never seen, I am not supposed to let her out unconstrained.

I thought I had found the perfect solution: I put her in a playpen. Or, rather, my garden, which has an 18" high rabbit fence around it.

Laverne the panther eating grass.

For the first several times, Laverne rolled around happily in the dirt, stalked squirrels and butterflies, and ate grass. I could leave her outside, unleashed and unsupervised and be inside in a peaceful, noisy-cat-free house.

I didn't have all day to wait for her to climb the fence on her own today, so I put her up there. She was not amused.

Then I went outside to check on her and she was in the yard. She had escaped. My only surprise was that it had taken her that long to figure out she could jump over the rabbit fence.

The other day, I went out to weed. Laverne whined that she too wanted to go outside, so I took her with me and plopped her next to the spinach. She stalked, rolled and ate grass and then got bored. I heard a scrambling noise and turned around from the collards.

Once she was there, though, she remembered what to do.

She was climbing the neighbor's five-foot fence.

She was taking the hard way out.

And there she goes. Climbing five feet rather than making an easy 18" jump.